Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1887-02-24
shAMs AND FRAUDS.
Some Unvarnished Truths About s'Sassl-
ety. at the National Capital.

tty at the NdLlonai CdplLdts
Although there is great show and
any amount of "social position and
frank in Washington, there is not an
equal amount of wealth to support it in
two-thirds of the cases. The majority
of those who shine in society and are
the most prominent and irrepressible
are dependent on Government salaries,
and it takes close management tomake
them suffice for plain living and place
in society. Many of the Senators are
wealthy; but they are the only ones, as
class, who have great wealth; and
the moneyed people, as the rich winter
residents who come only as private cit
iaens are called, are easily'counted.
zach season Washington runs over
with heiresses, and penniless girls, and
widows who come to Washington as to
a great matrimonial market, and wear
themselves half out in the struggle to
get into and keepin society. Rich men
never come to hunt for wives in this
modern Smithfeld, and when New
York millionaire did take Washing
ton bride it was pretty girl in strait
ened circumstances, who had never
been known in the society of army and
navy germans and legation balls.
Young army and naval officers
are the most mercinary lot of
all, and they invariably save up
their leaves of absence to spend them
in Washington during the winter
months. One miscreant in epaulets
once Mortified some married ladies by
saying: "It pays us poor fellows on
short commons to pass a season in
Washington sending bouquets and
spending all our money on the girls;
for all the rich girls go there, and their
fortunes are only equivalents for the
social position that we can give them" "
Sometimes these gay spectators get
terribly sold, as not every papa that
passes for a millionaire is really one,
and heiress is name very easily tick
eted to a girl who dresses well. Re-
Gently there has been notorious case
of one of these uniformed fortune
hunters getting the supposed heiress
after long siege, only to find too late
that the fortune was all in the air, van
ished, gone up like smoke. To balance
this there is the case of another young
officer who, although engaged to great
heiress now in Europe finishing her
French and buying her trousseau, longs
to be released from those golden fet-
ters to marry penniless orphan EN-
ployed in one of the departments here.
People who believe in the old-fashioned
love stories admire and sympathize
deeply with this crooked course of true
love, but his brother officers think the
distracted youth plain and simple
lunatic.
A joke is often told on one very
punctilious army officer, who in the
course of frontier experiences found
his eX-laundress the wife of Congress
man. The laundress' rise and the
growth of her husbands fortune could
not bring the ladies of the fort to rec
ognize her, and this particular officer,
although now General, could remem-
ber some stormy scenes, when, as a
poor young Lieutenant, he had scored
and upbraided the laundress about
matters of starch, buttons and plain
mending. She fell in his way next at
some celebration or event where her
husband, the Congressman, was in one
of the front carriages of the process
sion, and she, the gorgeous figure, on
the platform crowded with the distin-
guished people of the day. The Cen
eral in his uniform was introduced and
her voice and face sent his memory
chasing backwards. just about as the
identity was becoming clear her talk
went on to the winter that she had just
passed in Washington. Her comments
on society and people at the capital
wound up consolingly with this: 30.
yes! found, too, that army officers go
in quite good society at Washington"
When this got into army gossip it fur
nished as much amusement as q re-
mark that once rose above the hum of
voices at dinner party here when the
same woman, who looked sixty and
wore a raven-black wig over a face
scanned with hundred wrinkles, sim
peringly said: Yes, l mean to wear
baby blue until l am thirty. Wash
i'agton Cor. 50. Louis Gtobe-Democrat.